Cracks in the Pact D+15: East Germany Part I

As was the case with all Warsaw Pact countries, the seeds of defiance and resistance to Soviet domination had been planted long before July, 1987. Events earlier in the 1980s, coupled with the start of the Third World War served to accelerate the development of these seeds into plants. By late July, 1987 the plants were ready to bear fruit.

In the German Democratic Republic, the political leadership relied on the Ministry for State Security, more commonly known as the Stasi, to keep the civilian populace in check. The state security apparatus was a highly effective organization that East Germans lived in fear of. The Stasi were everywhere, whether in reality or by rumor. As was the case with most Eastern Bloc security and intelligence services, the power of the Stasi came largely from the projection that it was everywhere and monitoring everyone continuously. Whether or not this was true became a moot point as the power and capabilities of the Stasi, real and imagined, circulated through East German society, becoming an urban legend that served to help keep the population in a state of general compliance.

After two weeks of war, the Stasi’s grip on the East German people was loosening in some respects. In cities and large towns around the GDR, security services were firmly in control. With the fighting in the west continuing without end, casualties mounting, and NATO air attacks causing more destruction with each passing night, the focus of the Stasi was fixed on people and events within East Germany’s borders. Dissent, whether true or imagined, was dealt with swiftly and decisively. Here, the power of the Stasi came not from the illusion of power, but from a truncheon or the barrel of a gun.

In rural areas, Stasi control was considerably less absolute. Keeping the population sedate was not the only task state security concerned itself with. Intelligence, and counter-intelligence operations were underway, as were a half dozen other priority efforts. The manpower did not exist for the Stasi to patrol and monitor every inch of the German Democratic Republic. Since the stability of cities such as Berlin, Leipzig and Magdeburg could not risked, no corners were cut by Stasi agents and bureaucrats in the urban areas. As a result, it was the smaller towns which saw less monitoring and interference by the Stasi, largely because there were not enough men to do so.

To make up for the shortfall in manpower, Stasi agents operating in the rural areas were exceptionally more brutal and vindictive. Terror was a force-multiplier that hid the truth about just how few Stasi agents there were in the immediate areas and regions. The approach worked for a while, but as with all things, the effectiveness of terror eventually diminished. When it did, this brought on a new wave of consequences that would place East Germany’s Ministry of State Security and the rest of the government in a vulnerable position.

The first hints of what lay ahead in the coming days emerged from the shadows on the morning of D+15 from the small village of Pelkwitz, located roughly halfway between East Berlin and Dresden.

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